14:02:42 EST Feb 8, 2006
NEW YORK (AP) - The Danish editor behind publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that ignited deadly riots in the Muslim world said Wednesday he is willing to publish cartoons on the Holocaust from Iran.
"My newspaper is trying to establish a contact with the Iranian newspaper, and we would run the cartoons the same day as they publish them," Flemming Rose of the newspaper Jyllands-Posten said Wednesday in an interview on CNN's American Morning.
The Iranian newspaper Hamshahri said Tuesday it would hold the competition to test whether the West extends the same principle of freedom of expression to the Nazi genocide as it did to caricatures of the Prophet.
Meanwhile, the chief editor of Jyllands-Posten's Sunday edition, Jens Kaiser, said Wednesday it was quality, not content, that made him reject caricatures of Jesus three years ago, even though he told the cartoonist at the time that he feared "an outcry."
The cartoons had been sent in unsolicited.
Kaiser's e-mail to the cartoonist rejecting the drawings has been circulated to news media in recent days, apparently to question Jyllands-Posten's commitment to free speech regardless of topic.
In his e-mail, Kaiser told the rejected cartoonist that readers would not enjoy the drawings, which "will provoke an outcry."
Kaiser said Wednesday that he had actually rejected them because "their quality was not good."
However, he conceded that it "looks like we have opted for a line to publish Muhammad drawings and not Jesus drawings."
"I have been Sunday editor for 18 years, and I can say that 90-95 per cent of the unsolicited material we get is turned down," he said.
The cartoons denigrating the Prophet were first published by Jyllands-Posten in September. As Muslim protests mounted, numerous European newspapers have reprinted them in recent days in the name of free expression, provoking wider and angrier protests.
Rose, Jyllands-Posten's culture editor, told CNN he came up with the idea of the Prophet cartoon contest after several local cases of self-censorship involving people fearing reprisals from Muslims.
"There was a story out there and we had to cover it," Rose said. "We just chose to cover it in a different way, according to the principle: Don't tell it, show it."
The drawings - including one depicting the Prophet wearing a turban shaped as a bomb - have touched a nerve, in part, because Islam is interpreted to forbid any illustrations of the Prophet Muhammad, even favourable ones, for fear they could lead to idolatry.
"I do not regret it," Rose said. "I think it is like asking a rape victim if she regrets wearing a short skirt at a discotheque Friday night.
"In that sense, in our culture, if you're wearing a short skirt, that does not necessarily mean you invite everybody to have sex with you. As is the case with these cartoons, if you make a cartoon, make fun of religion, make fun of religious figures, that does not imply that you humiliate or denigrate or marginalize a religion."
The Iranian newspaper said its contest would be launched Monday and co-sponsored by the House of Caricatures, a Tehran exhibition centre for cartoons.
The newspaper and the cartoon centre are owned by the Tehran Municipality, which is dominated by allies of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, well-known for his opposition to Israel and has questioned the Holocaust as a possible 'myth.'.
Meanwhile, the editor of Jyllands-Posten, Carsten Juste, said Wednesday he had no intention of resigning over the issue.
He remarks came after Danish Foreign Minister Uffe Ellemann-Jensen said on national radio that "when an editor-in-chief admits he made an erroneous judgment . . . he should quit."
In a brief reply on the newspaper's website, Juste said: "I do not feel called . . . in that direction."
Jyllands-Posten said on Jan. 30 it regretted it had offended Muslims and apologized to them, but stood by its decision to print the cartoons, saying it was within Danish law. Two days later, Juste said he would not have printed the cartoons had he foreseen the consequences.
© The Canadian Press, 2006
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